


The Great Silence of Loss

by nostalgicatsea



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Hope vs. Despair, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 04:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14663169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgicatsea/pseuds/nostalgicatsea
Summary: There was no reason to keep the phone, not when Tony didn't have his, not when Tony was gone and all keeping it would do was hurt him, but Steve held onto it anyway.





	The Great Silence of Loss

There was no point in keeping the phone. It no longer tethered him to Tony. Bruce had its twin, and Tony was—

Missing.

Dead.

No, _don’t_.

But his mind ran too quickly, memories playing in his head before he could stop them, light years ahead of his thoughts. They burst to life on an unstable frequency, fractured images and sounds breaking through the loud gray static in his brain before skipping to the next memory.

Big, bold letters screaming across a bright TV screen in Edinburgh.

An unexpected voice on the line. One that he hadn’t heard in years, one that he hadn’t been sure he would hear again.

A kind voice.

The wrong voice.

His own, thin and asthmatic as he picked up the call and said Tony's name, anticipation and fear clashing inside of him.

And, as always when it came to Tony, hope. Bright and intense, piercing the murky fog he had been wading through on a dead man’s march to nowhere, not bothering to look for an escape because there was none.

(Because it would only come in the form of Tony’s forgiveness.)

The sky ripped open, darkness lying beyond the wound.

The sky closing up, condemning Tony to a cold, lonely death.

Ash everywhere, on his tongue, in the back of his throat, in his lungs. Under his fingernails as he sifted through it, as though he could bring Bucky back if he just kept his ashes from scattering.

He had sat on the bed, after, calcifying in blood and dirt and ash. Had listened to the steady stream of water pouring down in the shower, not feeling guilty about the waste, not feeling anything, before he eventually got up and washed off half an hour later.

The phone sat in his palm, blockish and crude as a brick and just as useless. There was no point in keeping it.

He thought of the grime sluicing off of him, Bucky’s ashes swirling down the drain, of Sam and countless others gone without a trace, and gripped the phone harder.

This was all he had now. This was all he had left of Tony. A piece of junk, the end of a cut rope.

He had waited too long again, and a part of him wondered whether he had done it out of respect or cowardice.

Part of him wondered if Tony had done it out of fear or anger. Out of pain.

But Tony had taken out his phone when Thanos’s children arrived, had had it on him at all times these past two years, Steve realized when Bruce recounted what happened, and that had to mean something. But Steve didn’t know what it meant and the puzzled frown on Bruce’s face, the brief pause after he had said it before he cut to the fight, had told him everything that Bruce didn’t say.

Tony hadn’t been able to make the call in the end.

Steve could see it clearly. Tony staring down at the screen, conflicted and indecisive. Tony about to make his decision when the commotion on the streets grabbed his attention.

Tony was forever trapped in that moment in Steve’s mind, in that space between two decisions, the space before an action that never happened, that would never happen.

“I said I’d be there if you needed me,” he said to that Tony inside of him, an ache knotting his heart.

If only he could go back and convince Tony of that, he thought, but he would have to go back further than their separation to do so. Back before Siberia, back before the Accords. Back before their farewell on the compound grounds. The seams had started to pull loose then, and they had never bothered to properly tighten up all the stitches again, assuming that it was enough that they had stopped Ultron as a united force, that they were tending to their own individual issues to keep from negatively affecting the team.

To keep the team together like he had said they should all those years ago. That was where he would have to go back to, back when they had focused too myopically on their own part of the solution to understand that they had only half of an equation each, not the whole. "Work" and "together" instead of "work together."

“I’ve seen colder,” Tony had said then, and no one had listened until the prophecy came to pass.

“We’ll lose,” Tony had said then, and he had answered that they would do that together too.

Except they hadn’t. They had been divided and stayed that way through it all, and they had lost that way too. Half of them had died without being given the chance to fight for survival.

There was no meaning behind their deaths, no reason behind who died and who lived.

He didn’t know what it was like to lose, he realized. He had lost fights as a kid, but he had shown bullies that there were people who would stand up to them. He had lost everything fighting the Red Skull, but he had foiled the Skull’s plan and helped turn the tide of war. He had lost everything again over the Accords, but he had gotten Bucky to safety.

Something always came out of the losses, however devastating they were, and because of that he picked himself up and jumped into the next fight over and over again.

But there was no battle to continue this time, no fight to jump into. Only loss, an unfathomable one for which there were no words, only an unnatural silence that spanned continents, spanned planets, spanned galaxies to the ends of the universe. Half of the universe was gone, the world eerily quiet and vast in their absence.

He couldn't bear the thought of losing any more than he already had—but even so he couldn’t let go of the phone. 

He couldn't let go of his hope that Tony would come back from beyond the stars, from beyond death. He couldn't let go of his hope that Tony would come back to him.

He was betting against high odds, but Tony had always managed to achieve the impossible. If there was even the slightest chance that Tony would come back, he would hold onto it. 

Even when all was lost.

Even when he knew that holding onto that last remaining hope would destroy him if nothing came of it.

**Author's Note:**

> You can read the sequel [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14839787)


End file.
